Sunday, 27 October 2013

KURBd - The Cause.... The Defect EP

EP review by jay@thesoundofconfusion.co.uk

There are some sounds that just worm into your DNA. It can come from your Nan sending you off to sleep with a nursery rhyme or a sound that sound-tracked your musical puberty. When the guitar stutters, then sets it's phaser to crunching, pulverizing stun with pear drop sweet harmonies in the first few seconds of 'Beware The Silence', the lead-track of the debut EP 'The Cause... The Defect' from KURBd, I am that fledgling long hair, being beautifully brutalised by Alice In Chains at Rock City. That's not to say that this track is some grunge rehash, rather it takes the touchstones of Alice, Sugar and yes the "N" shaped shadow that all bands since have had to bear, and crushes your head with an incendiary, iridescent blast of groove, grunge and bloody great rock that is utterly here and now. The harmonies and power are as measured and precise as a guided missile to your cortex.

'Wreck' has a darker, menacing hue to it. It pulls you in slowly, then overpowers you with a monolith-sized chorus, then slowly lets you reach out before fully immersing you in its wonderfully warm, delicious, irresistible, carny-esque whirlpool of pleasure. 'Wreck' is a song that Scott Weiland would go sober for. Then to the piledriver of cacophonous, splenetic, beautifully tempered fury that is the EP's final delight, 'Kerosene'. This is a blast of malevolent marvel that will whip your head back and forth while taking over your limbs to flail around, and wake days later with the bruises of size 9s on your spine as the whole crowd is transformed into a singular stage-diving, crowd-surfing beast. C'mon then KURBd, we want more. Please. (If I didn't say please my Nan would sing to me again!).